white (and green) lasagna with (not Ceasar) salad

So I had said in a previous post that I didn't like to make lasagna anymore because it was one of my ex's favorites, and cooking it just reminded me that he was gone.  And yet, it IS delicious.  In fact, white lasagna was part of our wedding feast.  So here's how I make mine:  First, I pulled out some crazy cheap chicken, purchased this week.

This pack contained 3 breasts, and I only needed 2, but I boiled all 3, plus the one left over from another night, because I wanted some pre-cooked chicken for Sunday, when I will be making more chicken romaine wheat wraps for my daughter's seventh birthday party.  I then shredded it, first by dicing it with a steak knife, then by tearing it with my fingers (don't get all huffy; I washed my hands).  I put it in a bowl with 4 eggs, a handful (probably 1/2 cup) of frozen spinach, about 1/3 of a large onion, diced, and another 2 handfuls of frozen broccoli, diced.

While the chicken was cooking, I put a package of lasagna noodles in my jumbo cooking pot, covered them with water, added about 2 Tbsp (just eyeballed it) of vegetable oil to keep them from sticking together, and set them on the stove to boil.  They only take 7 minutes but I had to allow time for the water to heat up so I set the timer for 10.  I also turned on the oven to 400 degrees.

I pulled out all of the mozzerella cheese I could find without digging too deep into my deep freezer, which was 3 partial bags (having used some and frozen the rest "for later" like I often do) which probably totaled 3 cups.  I first 'greased' the pan with some Ragu alfredo sauce (LOVE this stuff, usually $3 or more but I bought a bunch when it was $2.50.  It was months ago, but it's a vacuum sealed glass jar, and can be stored for a while.) then added about 2 tsp of "jar garlic" and 2 tsp of poultry seasonings, then shook the jar to "stir" it.

When I layered the lasagna, I put down 4 noodle strips on the bottom, then a few Tbsp of the "seasoned" Ragu, a layer of "chicken/broccoli/spinach/rawegg" then a layer of cheese, but not much, since 1) that makes it a lot more fattening, but moreso because 2) I didn't have a whole lot of cheese, and I was spreading it thin.  Even so, we only did 2 layers before we ran out cheese.







So I pulled out some more expensive cheese: a finely shredded blend of mozzarella  provolone, Parmesan  Romano  fontine, and asiago.  In other words, 'fancy cheese'.  It was on sale for $3 a bag last week, but even so, I hated to use it on this when "regular mozzerella" would do.

The last layer was just noodles, then the remaining sauce, and the remaining cheese.








To make the salad, I just pulled out some more romaine lettuce, added some bacon bits, and started looking for my ceasar salad dressing.  I couldn't find it, though I searched high and low.  Literally.  So I finally pulled out this Sweet Vidalia Onion dressing I bought on sale for $2 a few weeks ago.  I used a little less than half a bottle, so I'm calling it 80 cents instead of a dollar.  It tasted good without any croutons, and I don't like them very much myself, so I didn't bother making any.

When dinner was served, it looked like this: 

Dessert was some Halloween candy, superbly discounted.  Original label: $7.99, then marked at half off for $3.99, then marked at 75% off at $1.99, which is what I bought them for.  These jellybeans came in individual packets of 5 or 6 each.  We just opened them all up and put them in a candy dish, then took "a handful" each for dessert.  I'm going to REALLY overestimate and say we ate half the bag, or $1 worth.  Even though I know we did not.

If you were slicing this pan into all-adult portions, a whole pan is cut into 12 pieces.  I know, because I've worked in Italian restaurants. So 4 adult portions would be 1/3 of a pan.  Since my youngest is not quite five, we only ate 1/4 of the pan as a family, but for the purposes of calculations, I will consider "a family of four" to eat 1/3 of the pan...

Time for totals: chicken was 2/3 of a pack that cost $3.92, one jar of Ragu alfredo at $2.50, one box of lasagna noodles, which vary in cost from week to week but usually cost between 1 and 3 dollars, and I probably bought for $2 or less, and since I tend to overestimate to stay on the safe side, we're going to call $2, four raw eggs (which are usually $1.90 a dozen, so this is 1/3 of that, or 63 cents), spinach and broccoli, which even combined wouldn't be 1/2 of a bag, which normally costs $2 or so, but the broccoli was on sale for $1 a bag last week (huzzah!), so to call it 50 cents would be over-estimating the amount used, but slightly under-estimating the cost of a whole bag.  The salad used about 1/4 of a head of romaine lettuce, which cost 98 cents this week (sale price still current at Costas, folks), and about 1/3 of a container of generic bacon bits ($1.20 at best buys across from Charles Cole), which brings our total to: One-third of the pan of lasagna, which contained: $2.61 (chicken) +  $2.50 (Ragu) + $2 (noodles) + 63 cents (raw egg) + 50 cents spinach and broccoli combined + 10 cents (a few tsps seasonings) = 1/3 of $8.34 =  $2.78 (lasagna) + 25 cents (lettuce) + 40 cents (bacon bits) + 80 cents (salad dressing) + $1 dessert 

= $5.23

Since I over-estimated in a lot of spots tonight, I'm going to call this an 'under $5 meal'.  In case you were wondering, the remaining lasagna will be packaged in tupperware and frozen for a quick meal another day.

A good time was had by all, especially my youngest:

Grilled Chicken Salad

So the last two days I was down at my sister's house.  She has this beautiful backyard garden and for dinner last night she told me we were having grilled chicken salad.  "Oh!" I said, "That sounds like something for my blog!"  She replied that it's more than perfect, since the lettuce came from her garden, so it's free, even!

First, we marinated some chicken she bought on sale.  She belongs to the store's shopper's club so she only paid $10.72 for this bag.  She started talking about how many pounds were in the bag and how many pounds she thought we were using and I responded with something like, "whoah, the bag comes with three split breasts and we're cooking one, so it's 1/3 of the bag, also known as a little more than $3 worth."  (Now that I'm home, I did the math - it was $3.57, assuming all 3 breasts were of equal size.  To be on the "safe" side - we can call it $3.75 worth of chicken)

She diced the chicken, then shook on garlic powder, salt, and pepper, and left it in the fridge for a few hours while we took the kids out.  When we were ready to eat, we pan-fried it and went outside to pick the lettuce. 

She and her husband had planted gardens in the "raised beds" shown here, including radishes, tomatoes, lettuce, and spinach.  I'm sure they've got other plants I haven't identified.  I am not nearly such an accomplished gardener.  My crops tend to be the kind you can plant and forget about completely until you need to harvest them.  Like rhubarb and raspberries. 

Our salad contained lettuce and spinach leaves.

The "other" salad toppings were all things she had in her fridge and cupboards, including: apples, sunflower seeds, cheese, carrots, green olives, croutons, and craisins. 

Ironically, it was the most traditional of these toppings, the carrots, that were largely ignored by the 8 of us.  We also thought the turntable, known as a "lazy susan", which belonged to our mother, would be really cute and handy, but in reality the 3 people farthest from it still ended up stretching and passing our plates down, because once all the toppings were piled on we did not want to risk moving the whole lazy susan up the table.  Perhaps we should have started with it in the middle.  But we didn't.

The chicken is on the bottom, in case you were wondering

In addition to chicken salad, which was fantastic, she served fresh, locally grown corn on the cob.  My sister lives in Amish Pennsylvania, "Dutch Country", and there are many local farmers with corn for sale.  She bought 18 ears for $6.  We ate almost all of it.

The green things in the ends of the corn are a fast-cooling plastic that screws into the cobs, making them less likely to fall out, and the corn much easier to serve.  I've never seen them before but apparently they are sold somewhere.

Dessert was ice cream cones using up the last of some ice cream my sister had frozen a while ago, and some brand-new Keebler waffle cones.  She told me she had no idea how much they cost but I googled them and you can buy 12 cones here for $4.65.  We had 8 cones, for $3.10, assuming similar prices.  Since I buy ice cream for $2.50 to $3.00 a carton, and we used probably one whole container (among the several mostly empty containers which we cleaned out - really, I was doing her a favor, eating up leftovers like that)

And so, our total for 8 people was: $3.75 chicken, free lettuce, $6 corn, $3.10 cones + $3 ice cream, + toppings for salad.  My total allowance for 4 people is $10; we fed 8 people so I'd give a $20 allowance.  That means we could have spent $4.15 on salad toppings and been ok. 

I, personally, think we probably cut it close but this was delicious.

Chicken Spinach Alfredo Pasta

My junior year in college (2002, Mansfield University of PA), the school cafeteria opened a "pasta bar".  They had a row of hot plates, big bins of cooked pasta on ice (usually more than one type), some cooked, diced chicken, pork, or beef, the three basic sauces (marinara, alfredo, and pesto) and a large variety of vegetables.  The "bar" was staffed by one or two employees who would assemble your chosen ingredients into a steaming, delicious pile of awesomeness.  I walked away from that year of college with a profound appreciation for stir-fry.  One of my favorite ensembles from these glory days was

Chicken Spinach Alfredo Pasta

Now, this doesn't exactly fit into my self-imposed ideal of a 3-course meal for under $10, but the way I see it, when you make stir-fry, you're mixing your "main course" and your "side dish" into one (yes, I must say it again) steaming, delicious pile of awesomeness.  First, prepare some

Crazy Cheap Chicken Meat

This chicken, here, I bought for $1.58/lb about four months ago.  I bought two "family size" packs.  I kept one in the original package, possibly thinking of the dinner guests that I have sooooo often.  I split the other into four small generic freezer bags (because that's how much I use at a time), and tossed them in my freezer.  Basic Math tells me that the amount of chicken I used in this recipe cost me about $2.40.  To thaw my frozen chicken, I put it in a pot of water on the stove, still in the plastic bag, over low-to-medium heat, until it was thawed enough to remove from the bag, then sliced it into stir-fry sized chunks and put it in my incredibly large skillet that I use for all of my stir-fry recipes.  I added a little water to keep the chicken moist, and allowed it to cook while I continued to assemble the meal.  (If you find your water evaporates while the chicken is still frozen, add more water.)

While the chicken was thawing in the first place, I cooked some ziti.  I like ziti because it's a noodle that's easy for the kids to eat, but unusual enough that you still feel you're preparing a restaurant-quality meal.  I also like to use penne for the same reason.  Penne is ridged, and "holds" sauce better than ziti, which is smooth.  They both look like little tubes and cost between $1 and $1.50 a box.  I'm going to guess I put roughly $0.75 worth of ziti in this dish, since I didn't use the whole box.  A good suggestion is that a handful of raw pasta is a serving, since it expands while cooking.  The side of the box always has measurements, but I try to avoid using measuring cups, since that's one more thing I have to wash when all is said and done.

Once the pasta is cooked, strain it, strain your now-cooked chicken, and just leave them in the strainer while you prepare the sauce.  I poured my sauce in my jumbo skillet, since I can heat it there and fit all the chicken and pasta in the same skillet, but I needed to rinse it first since it had some chicken fat lining the sides.  Unless you like the added fat.  Consumer's choice, there.   

I added some "extras" to this $3.29 can of cheesy Ragu roasted garlic parmesean alfredo sauce, namely: two shakes of cayenne pepper, and roughly a tablespoon of generic "italian seasoning" (I just dumped some into the palm of my hand - again, don't like doing the dishes).  I also added half of a finely diced onion and roughly 3/4 cup of bird's eye frozen spinach, which I microwaved on a plate for a minute or so until it was cooked (only 1/2 cup after cooking, spinach shrinks when it cooks) and scraped into the pan.  Don't skimp on the spinach and buy the cheap stuff.  I know from experience: the difference is usually only 50 cents to a dollar, and there is a BIG difference in quality, even in frozen.  My final addition to the sauce (and my proudest "thrifty" find in this recipe): A palmful of generic bacon bits (which you can buy from the seasonings section of Dollar General for $1 a bottle).  It may seem like an odd addition to a pasta dish, but I think putting pine nuts in/on pasta is just plain freaky, yet people continue to do this for reasons that are completely beyond my comprehension.   And anyway, nobody said YOU have to put bacon-flavor in your chicken and spinach awesomeness (but you totally should)  I am going to assume that, combined, these "extra" ingredients were about $1.50.

So, we have $2.40 (chicken) + $0.75 (pasta) + $3.29 (Ragu Alfredo) + $1.50 extras.  The "Main and Side Course Because I Can That's Why" totals $7.94.  For dessert, we have the crowd-pleaser (at least in my house) of applesauce.  I only used about 1/4 of this can ($1.38) for our dessert (with cinnamon added for taste), so our entire meal cost less than $10.  And the best part was that there was roughly 2 cups left over, which I put in the fridge for leftover night. That, and my kids ate spinach.